Arnold Bennett
BY RICHARD
JENNINGS.
BE multitude of Arnold Bennett's friends who gathered in the Church of St. Clement Danes on Tuesday suffered a sensation even more poignant than is always inevitable in like solemnities. He became an incredible absence. One forgot that all were there for him, in the search for his familiar figure, with its aspect of composure and slight assurance ; the figure seen everywhere, missing nothing, knowing everybody ; practising, with perfect mastery, the art of living on twenty-four hours a day. So, for a moment, dead men become much more alive than the living, whom they doniinate for the last time, until they recede gradually into the past.
This art of living was one of Arnold Bennett's just sources of pride. At least, he spoke of it as an art. Those who envied his inexhaustible pluck and energy preferred to call it the exploit of a temperament, a dis- position ; one with " no nonsense " about it. Part of that nonsense, for him, would be the belief, common amongst weaker creatures, that an artist has recalcitrant moods and must wait uneasily for the moment of inspira- i.ion. It is not thus that a man writes so many and so many thousand words a day, and gets a book done, like The Old Wives Tale, within the allotted time and length—exactly 200,000 words ; the first part written in six weeks. " Take off your coat and get on with it "- that, he told me, was his way of dealing with " inspiration." So he worked, and so he found time for living.
With this method (or with that temperament) he must surely have been amongst the few happy artists and men. His enjoyment of life was obvious. And it is indeed a great thing to be born very poor, to become sufficiently rich, to win success entirely by your own efforts, and, in sum, " to realise in middle age the dreams of your early . youth." Nevertheless, there are many who manage to achieve misery under those conditions. Arnold Bennett made the most of them, partly because he liked being successful. Having earned money, he showed that he possessed the infinitely rarer aptitude for enjoying it, which led him never to be " nasty " about others who made it or received it. I spoke once of a man who, I knew, happened to be paid certain subsidies for work not altogether in accordance with his proclaimed political convictions. " I know," said Arnold, " but, then, think how nice it is when that cheque comes in ! "
No nonsense about money ! Some of those who lacked it were grateful to him for his recognition of its advantages, and his sympathetic attitude in this matter contrasted pleasantly with the cool detachment noticeable in the very rich who " never think " of all that they possess—and keep. " That's the price," was his ulti- matum to the strange people who beset him for articles, films, and other contributions. It was a high price ; but who did the work better than he ?—as a journalist, immensely readable, always punctual, doing exactly what was required of him.
His stammer may have helped him in negotiation, as it added surprise to his talk. He could " floor " one by delay in argument ; and certain remarks thus acquired the, force of a disconcerting revelation. " I'll tell you something about that man," he whispered to me. once, as he threw his head back, and allowed for the customary pause--" I don't like that man ! " As though it were all one needed to know about the fellow ! When, one day, he praised the literary idol of his later days, Stendhal, and I spoke in dislike of certain artificially romantic incidents in the Chartreuse, his " you're a heartless fellow ! " seemed, as he let it fall, a complete refutation of censure.
In literary matters one could only disagree with so acute a judge in regard to his too easily expressed con- tempt for obscurity or difficulty, in great writers. " The man cannot be understood "—this was enough for a living French poet, well worth the pains of effort. I suppose he admired Stendhal chiefly for that plainness of statement in him which display s psychological subtlety. As to the " incomprehensible" philosophies : "take it from me, and I'm getting old, metaphysics is "—long pause—" no good!"
But to recall these sayings is to give a partial impres- sion. No young writer of originality would have lacked understanding from Arnold Bennett. He was ready for anything, aware of all modern movements and manifesta- tions. To Joseph Conrad he wrote long ago : " only other creative artists can understand a creative artist, which limits public comprehension rather severely." It isn't true ! But it may serve as a corrective. And he was boundlessly tolerant of other people's too fastidious tastes. To an ardent book-collector it was a delight to be shown the exquisite manuscripts of his own books ; lovingly, patiently, " ealligraphed " ; beautifully bound. He told me that the bookshop of Riceyman Steps was " transported " from one in a seaside town and " des- cribed truthfully."
To his own books one will turn in these days, thinking of him ; and perhaps, above all, to those passages in them which reveal his other side : his sense of tragedy in common things.
He was an early admirer of Maupassant, whose line Vie he confessed that he once regarded " with mute awe." But it is not the cruel observation of Maupassant that influences such passages in Arnold -Bennett's work as the explanation of Mr. Shunshion's tear in Clayhanger, or, in The Old Wives Tale, that admirable episode of the Buxton hotel where Constance and Sophia, so pitiably squabble in their unaccustomed luxury ; or again, the page where Sophia watches the dead body of her worthless husband, and forgets all his " deviousness " in the thought that " he had once been young, and that he had grown old, and was now dead." Over all this presides the unique Bennett, who understood without sentimentality, who wondered at the mystery of life in an emotion "uncoloured by any moral or religious quality," and who marked it and set it down. Certainly, he never grew old. " Youth and vigour " carried him imperturbably to the point of that accidental illness which has taken him suddenly from us all.
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